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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchJeremy Cooper|title= ArmadillosDiscord|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is one easily located. The two protagonists of Texas' downtroddenthe novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Dirt poor Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and abused. ''no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a 'sub' from force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on hercharm. The two, week inpredictably, week out.don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie' s progressive views at odds with Rebekah''She has only the vaguest notion that there is s conservative leaning. However, something wrong with connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the abuse she enduresclamour..''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1804272264

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Polly Barton|title=The BirdsWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=WePolly Barton're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on the shores of a large lake, but in a community relying on the farmland s debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that is scattered in amongst the woods. Our chief concerns are brother uses translation as both subject and sister – Mattis and Hegegoverning metaphor. HeThe narrator, Mattisnewly relocated from London to Berlin, is what works translating video games into Japanese through the other villagers call 'simple' – sureprocess of localisation, he knows rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes new audience. Barton treats this as a well-turned phraseparadoxical act: arguably, and how to talk to girls and when to not stare at themin striving for universality, but he language is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include his sisterendlessly repackaged, who is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meet, and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situationits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. But from From this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way novel opens outinto a wider, the life resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full of sun as well as shadeorder to be understood, of labour and of idlenessaccepted, and wit and charm as much as hardship. I defy you to read this and think this corner of Scandinavia bleak.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola BarkerMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Cauliflower®Disappearing Act

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's 'collagist'message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, piecing together diverse documents to create her journey slowly bends toward a picture traveling circus. Swept up in this series of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)events, M eventually offers to step in for a largely illiterate guru circus performer who attracted followers to his intense worship has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the goddess Kali. His life story is circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a sticky mass retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of contradictions:the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Toni Morrison 295967572X|title= God Help the ChildPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and emotionally raw portrayal, that seeks to cover issues what the purpose of race, genderthis journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and paedophiliahas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. A slim volume, yes, Why not? Not much else is clear either - but one that we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is powerful in its puncha steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=Out in the OpenHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5

|summary=Meet It could be argued that the boy. We never learn his name – in fact we learn very little in pervading theme of this book, such as where or when we are, and why. What we do know is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that he has left homesomething in your life is not quite right. We get The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling . However, Goodman counteracts his father discomfort with a force which is too handy with punishmentseductive, but that can't be radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across former owner of the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially as countryside house he's chosen one of the most awkwardconsidering, Helen represents a volta in his life, attritional times her past tied to cross said plains – his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the land protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in the middle of a horrendous drought. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherdassisted living facility now, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the boy flee what he needs to?sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentOlga Tokarczuk|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette'', her final novel. The family servant, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about her romantic prospects – including Patrick BrontëWhat's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss the lips good of a man with a beard as big as rooksworld that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?' nests than I could yours, Tabby.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|The title=Stork Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young manof this spellbinding work, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company House of Day, House of rebelsNight'' at the heart , somewhat reflects this notion of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountains. The storks that return to shifting realities - the mountains each spring are migrantssmall, subtle changes which govern our lives, like so many of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transit, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return shift from day to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Elisa Albert|title= After Birth|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not for anyone who has a rosy picture of new motherhood. In fact, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months of motherhoodnight, howeverquotidian, or a partner of somebody who is going through it, it is an astounding and revelatory readcausing chaos. Never before have I read a more searingBut, honest and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Ayelet Gundar-Goshen|title= Waking Lions|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If the point of ''literature'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms of writing - constant in that image is to force you to think about the real worldhouse, stoic against the political world, the painful life-as-we-know-ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it world, whilst catching you up in a story about something that never really happened, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this bookis perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Four BooksTower

|summary=''The Four BooksHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' is a difficult. In this compelling novel, challenging novel and not for Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the feint heartedidentity of T, or for someone looking for a page-turnerthe protagonist of this tale. It really challenges the readerJust as T's perceptions and opens up story is being told, the story of a gateway to an era that second protagonist is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a western culture. Set wealthy family in Maoist China it tells the story of four protagonists and a memorable antagonist. The four19th century, found guilty who died of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education tuberculosis after being locked in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feeltower, captures T's imagination. Annie'The Four Books'' will come s fate is, above all, an enticing story to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieceT. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The High Mountains of PortugalVaim

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it'All was strange''. He has given himself .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the job pervading sense of seeking something out otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the High Mountains of PortugalVaim, based on an ancient religious diary he found working a fictional fishing village in an archive, Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and to do so he needs the use of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himselfEline, for he cannot make head nor tail two of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all protagonists caught in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Distant LightBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person alive. He knows he's not – he still goes down to the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessitiesEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well bedistortion. A lot Even a kiss, usually a symbol of his thoughts are about lifeintimacy and closeness, however, for he has little to do except notice becomes evidence of love lost. When the nature around himnarrator cries out internally, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village''come over here and kiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countrysideconfirm her emotional numbness. Life – and the nature The imagined recipient of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageLili is Crying|rating=34.5

|summary=Tania James was a Fulbright Fellow First published in New Delhi 1953 in 2011–12. For French, this, her second novel after ''Atlas is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of Unknowns'' (shortlisted for its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) page and the story collection ''Aerogrammes''positions them elsewhere, she clearly draws on her personal knowledge of India in all its contradictionsdisjointed, especially when it comes to environmental policytruncated. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account Like the lives of an elephant named the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakerher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Anakana SchofieldJonathan Buckley|title= Martin JohnOne Boat|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this novel before I read work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it for review, after the death of both her parents. Prompted by which I mean I had heard it was profaneher mourning, strange her narrative voice is meditative and had deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a daring subject matter accompanied by elements book that not only requires but inspires depth of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it thought, since its narrative structure is certainly profane fragmentary and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at allironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=The Heart of ManBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural Iceland''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, full the young mother of gnomic comments about how close toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and death are, that has her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as its core a journey taken by''wild card'', amongst othersshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, a naïve and hormonal teenaged lad yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a full coffin? Whystrange, I hear you crytaciturn and solitary man, who says he has a trilogy concerning the samecabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. YesWithout realising it, itthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}} {{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the obvious answer, really – why else would we come to this third part, where the survivors chessboard of life and is something of the expedition rest upa grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, note as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the women giving them helpmany relationships woven into this story, and see how eminently close the circle of life central one for readers to unravel is to the figure of fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a snake swallowing its tail throughsocially awkward chess prodigy, among other thingscontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, dogs rutting a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a church below long battle with cancer, the coffinbrothers's bier?already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= VertigoWhite Nights|rating= 45|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= The short stories As always in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soulDostoyevsky, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of the ordinary and every day. The narrative voice appeared to me to be the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the casecharacter work is sublime. The style of the stories One is that of short vignettes, mostly written in never left wondering what a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poeticcharacter is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kristopher JansmaJames Baldwin|title=Why We Came to the CityGiovanni's Room

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='We came to 'Giovanni's Room'' follows the city because we wished to live haphazardlynarrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to reach for only the least realistic of our desiresHella, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teachwho is travelling in Spain, and the real tension in the novel arises not, when we came to live, discover that we had never diedfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. We wanted to dig deep It is David's crippling shame and suck out all the marrow denial of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last withis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=Blood BrothersForbidden Notebook

|summary=It's Berlin, This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the Nazis are on their way to powermoment our protagonist, even if they will never cross these pages themselves. The city – hugeValeria Cossati, glamorouspurchases her forbidden notebook, bustling, vicious and learns about herself in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eatintimate and revealing ways. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willi. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorOttessa Moshfegh|title=The ShoreMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first story we hear from the ShoreAt best, this novel is a group scathing critique of isolated islands off modern society and reveals the coast fragility of Virginiahuman relationships; at worst, it is from Chloe, who's telling her sister about what she overheard in the store. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rindscynical, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered predictable and ''they done cut his thang clean off''slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. The girls are motherless This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and Chloe newly orphaned girl in her twenties is fiercely protective of her little sister Renee. She's disillusioned with the first of the strong women we'll encounter world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in these storiesfact, which interlink to give a greater pictureher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronMatthew Tree|title=BlackheathWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida father, a drunk and Dominic are doing well so chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career failed miserably and children Niamh and teenage Michaelwho had endless crises of self confidence. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start So Tim applied himself to minglehis studies, things start changing for each of themcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julian BarnesB0C47LV1PC|title=The Noise of TimeFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|summary=Julian BarnesCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''s first novel since he won joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the Booker Prize for [[question if you did, would it land? The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] catch is a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75). Knowing Barnes's penchant that the answer for stylistic experimentation, though, this was never going to both could well be a straightforward, chronological life story. Instead, as Barnes so often does, he sets up a tripartite structure, focussing on three moments in Shostakovich... no. ''Fragility's life when he has a reckoning with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all about: 'Art is set as the whisper city of historyPortland, heard above Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the noise of time.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinMosby Woods|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting The West isn't the ground running, I will dispense with any major preambledominant force it once was. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by Nobody in the emotions of her parents as they separate – and West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the influence best course of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of viewaction. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events Governments are peppered by minor acts of destructionflailing. But men can be alienated too – especially oneA war here, a reluctant guest at a party push for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try and abandonclimate action there. 'All About Alice' – A feeling that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factoryin actual charge. Imagine then, Marian? And we complete there was a lap of the calendar man with precognition. Imagine the wintry tale of strategic advantage in this asset; a man unable to who can tell his work superiors you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the problems he faces at home – a new homemost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Enright0571379559|title=The Green RoadHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=''The Green RoadHouse of Broken Bricks'' is the story of a familyfour people. If the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irish, with all the appropriate characters Tess Hembry's roots are in placeJamaica: the boy who goes off to temperamentally she might be a priesthappier there, but instead, she lives in the daughter who likes house on the bottle far too muchriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the son who does good works passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the woman who stays back where she was born delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and marries a local manMax, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'grande dames Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' re related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is perfect out with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at being needyTroy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, whilst all Queen Penelope is on the while maintaining brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that she needs nothingis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. ButWhether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of coursewater or a nuclear holocaust, it this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''isDesert Creatures'' Anne Enrightby Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Kate AtkinsonEric LaRocca|title=A God The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in Ruinsthe horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to survive be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the waryear-long relationship that once defined her. As Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the statisticssummer after. But - Set against all the odds, he came through it, albeit backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with some time spent as a prisoner of war. On balance he had a good warher older lover, but time will see him married to Nancydepicting its all-consuming nature, father to Viola how it changed her perspective on both romantic and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie - familial relationships and left with the feeling that how it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good waraltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukMichael Grothaus|title=Beautiful YouShining People

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And letI'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.'s hope your introduction ' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to her be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is more gentle than exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that we have on ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the first page sake of this bookmy name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, where she Atalanta is being raped in front raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a full court houseformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – male to join the bone Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – sit back Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and say nothing, if not whip carve out their camera phoneher own legendary place in history. Once people take her out on What follows is a gurney whirlwind of challenges and discovery and recognise through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be herundoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, we can start from the beginning, where she is a lowly underling at a law firmyoung Sri Lankan, having failed too many exams has returned to progress satisfactorilythe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. The company This is where the world's richest man a place she spent her formative years. It is in legal negotiations having left not a place she was born into, but the world's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens to pick Penny to replace her with, even if one she doesn't think thinks of herself as home. How she came to be at the most beautiful girl around. But what exactly is Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she is wanted first arrived there provide the ''score'' for, this gentle and can yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her apolitical style past and much like the musical score of feminism and aspirations be met?a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)178563335X|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary= This is the When we first novel of Helle Hellemeet Rachel Bird she'sa trainee vicar, an award winning Danish author, to be translated into English. It is easy to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades sitting in her Danish homeland. The rhythmic, natural flow of the narrative is mesmerising on a PCC meeting and appears wondering why they're held when you need to lull you through pick the bookchildren up. It has some lovelyHer husband, Christopher, spare sentences of description: ''There were runcollects six-year-down cottages with open doors old Hannah and news on the radioher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Gulls flocked around an early harvester Thelma's daughter-in the late sun'-law won't let her see her grandson. But mostlyHolthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, it is written in a modernistlovely place, almost stream but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of consciousness stylethe vicar, which I found refreshingGail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alice Thompson1398515388|title=The Book CollectorBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Violet. Swept off her feet by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shopFirst of all, it was the earthquake, she immediately falls deep in love with himthe ocean floor, which created the tsunami and is quickly marriedthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and almost as quickly with childutter devastation. When The deaths were uncountable, and the boy is born, however, fairly understandable doubts creep inloss of livelihoods was widespread. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when she wakes in The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the middle list of priorities but - six months after the night alone? tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. What ghost is left by He wasn't a dog person but the fact convenience store owner's comment that he lost would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his first wife and baby in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about her new life, her new life's life, car door and Tamon the idea of a nanny looking after it? Just what is going on dog jumped in her new country pile?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sasa Stanisic and Anthea Bell (translator)0989715337|title=Before Papa on the FeastMoon|author=Marco North|rating=2.54

|summary= Deep ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the heart fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of Germany sits the village of Furstenfeldetheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. It lies on a spit Two of land that, legend has it, a giant created, between two lakes – the Great Lake, dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the Deep Lakebuckets as he filled them. All around '' How is forest. that for an opening? The village is enjoying summer, and we can see style of this novel in the inhabitants as they go about their lazy life on the last hot day and night before the seasons change, form of interconnected short stories goes from the teenage lads fishing succinct and crashing cars or preparing for a bell-ringing exam, laconic to the girl who wants outwistful and musing, to the middle-aged man who made turning on a pub out of a garage and some curtainssixpence. And author Marco North, to who has the older man (a retired soldier) who is watching his last piece most wonderful turn of titillating TV before going out to either fetch cigarettes or shoot himselfphrase, starts as he means to the older still lady painting a portrait of the town ready to auction it off go on the morrow. For the morrow is the annual fete, and all those people are, one way or another, reacting to its imminent arrival.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271295</amazonuk>